Title Post

• What does health mean?
• Might there be multiple definitions of health depending upon who is doing the defining?
• So then who gets to define health? And if someone’s definition is considered superior, then the process of defining health is political, no?
• Who gets to determine how to best “promote” and “protect” someone else’s health?
• What does it mean to protect another person’s health?

“What is public health?” from the American Public Health Association

To one degree or another, all of us here today operate within the domain of public health and therefore we share some understanding about what public health is and should do.

Typically, public health is defined as “promot(ing) and protect(ing) the health of people and the communities where they live, learn, work and play” (from the American Public Health Association website).

On the surface, this is pretty uncontroversial. It’s straightforward — might be a bit vague, but it’s a straightforward description of what people in the public health field are all working towards. But upon closer reflection, maybe there are some questions that we should be asking, like…